Make People Money - Why B2B Always Beats B2C
"The difference between millionaires and billionaires is that millionaires make themselves rich and billionaires make others rich"
As a B2C startup, value definition is usually pegged to:
- How much time you can save
- How you can improve the quality of their life
- How you can improve their confidence or their convenience
These are great metrics to work by, however expensive due to the intangibility of the outcome.
More often than not, B2C startups "have" to be venture-backed due to the enormous cost of acquiring users and then the added cost of retaining them to prevent churn.
In addition, every B2C startup in effect is competing in value with "Netflix", do you provide as much entertainment or value as a subscription service that costs $9.99 p/m.
These challenges exist, but in less severity with B2B.
In a B2B business, your product's job is to improve the operational experience of another business by using your product. This usually is pegged to:
- Saving money
- Making money
- Saving time
In addition, unlike B2C startups, most/all businesses have allocated budgets to "invest" into the betterment of their business.
Secondly, when your product is directly responsible for revenue-generating or saving activities it becomes tightly coupled into another business' core functionality stretching the daylights out of your LTV.
In addition, B2B startup customers have a larger appetite for MVPs as long as the product does what it says it does.
In short, B2C startups can/will succeed but as a bootstrapped indiehacker, you're more likely to have odds play for you vs against you if you build a B2B startup.
